If I have
any special power of appreciating different shades of mind, I owe it no
doubt to the analysis I have so perpetually and unsuccessfully practiced
on myself. In fact, I have always regarded myself as matter for study,
and what has interested me most in myself has been the pleasure of
having under my hand a man, a person, in whom, as an authentic specimen
of human nature, I could follow, without importunity or indiscretion,
all the metamorphoses, the secret thoughts, the heart-beats, and the
temptations of humanity. My attention has been drawn to myself
impersonally and philosophically. One uses what one has, and one must
shape one's arrow out of one's own wood.
To arrive at a faithful portrait, succession must be converted into
simultaneousness, plurality into unity, and all the changing phenomena
must be traced back to their essence. There are ten men in me, according
to time, place, surrounding, and occasion; and in their restless
diversity I am forever escaping myself. Therefore, whatever I may reveal
of my past, of my Journal, or of myself, is of no use to him who is
without the poetic intuition, and cannot recompose me as a whole, with
or in spite of the elements which I confide to him.
I feel myself a chameleon, a kaleidoscope, a Proteus; changeable in
every way, open to every kind of polarization; fluid, virtual, and
therefore latent--latent even in manifestation, and absent even in
presentation.
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